The present invention pertains to a cigarette package and, more particularly, to a cigarette package having individual compartments for holding fresh cigarettes, a cigarette coal extinguisher, and a receptacle for discarded cigarette butts.
In the absence of accessible ashtrays, smokers often find themselves with no other alternative to disposing of cigarette ashes and butts by littering. Portable ashtrays offer little help as they have insufficient capacity to hold all the ash left by a package of cigarettes. On the other hand, ashtrays that have adequate capacity are not easily portable. Thus, the smoker is presented with the dilemma of having to decide whether or not to carry a separate ashtray. There are those in the prior art who have attempted to address these problems with various types of cigarette packages, cigarette extinguishers, and extinguisher-equipped cigarettes, as described in Japanese patents Showa-60-168374, Heisel-4-279446, Heisel-4-58877, Heisel-4-252169, and Heisel-6-46822.
Other than the Japan Patent Heisel-6-46822, noted above, those involved in the design of previous cigarette packages apparently did not consider the problem of what to do with cigarette butts. Properly disposing of cigarette butts presents socioenvironmental problems to the smoker, as those with no access to ashtrays found themselves having to litter. The wrapped cigarette container component or package of Japan Patent Heisel-6-46822 comprises a cigarette storage part and an extinguisher part. The storage part contains latticework-type chambers, each sized to hold one cigarette. The extinguisher part comprises an extinguisher compartment located adjacent to the storage compartment. The extinguisher compartment contains an extinguisher cylinder, which has a tapered end, and is firmly attached to it. When the smoker wishes to smoke, he or she retrieves a cigarette from the wrapped container compartment. After finishing the cigarette, the smoker inserts the still-smoldering butt into the extinguisher cylinder. Being deprived of oxygen by the tapered end of the extinguisher, the burning ember of the cigarette butt is extinguished. Afterward, when the smoker again wishes to smoke, the butt is retrieved from extinguisher cylinder and placed into the original storage compartment for the cigarette and a new cigarette may be selected from the package. Upon consuming the new cigarette, the butt is placed as before in the extinguisher cylinder.
The extinguisher of Japan patent Heisel-6-46822 was designed specifically and solely to extinguish cigarettes. After a cigarette had been extinguished, it would be removed from the cylinder, and then returned to the compartment from which it had originally been retrieved. Since it was returned to the compartment with its ashy end exposed, the cigarette tended to leave the compartment visibly dirty. Moreover, since many smokers would want to avoid this type of problem, they might well resort to other solutions (e.g., littering) to the problem of cigarette disposal.
An important object of the present invention is to enable the smoker to place an extinguished cigarette butt in its original compartment without dirtying the compartment. Another object of this invention is to free the smoker from the temptation to litter by providing both an ash receptacle and a storage compartment for cigarette butts. Still another important object of the present invention is to relieve people of the burden of having to carry portable ashtrays around with them.